Yesterday was M.’s 9th birthday, her first since her father died. I tried my best to make it a good day for her, and I think it was. We got through the whole day without her being sad at all, which is good. I, of course, kept thinking about what he was missing, and how […]

Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends. The Year of Magical Thinking has been on my reading list since it first came out at the end of 2005, and I just hadn’t gotten around to reading it. In looking for books […]

As with most of us, I love the idea of reusing and recycling things that could otherwise just be useless. Pallets have been hugely popular over the years for the sheer variety of things you can do with them, either as a whole or by taking them apart. Reclaimed wood, especially barn wood, is just […]

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Book Review Ratings

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I have decided to start giving the books I review a rating. Book reviews are, by their very nature, subjective. Still, it is sometimes hard to figure out where a book falls in relation to other books. I know a lot of sites that I read use rating systems, and I like that because it gives me something a little more concrete to take into account. I know that if a reviewer has great things to say about two movies, for example, but rates one a 5 and one a 4, I’ll check out the 5 first if I value their opinion. For those of you who read my reviews, here is how it all breaks down:

5 Stars: I LOVED it. It has earned a space on my “permanent” book shelf and will be reread. NOTE: There are very few books in this category. It is reserved for books that I want to reread again and again, whether timeless classics like Little Women or more modern ones. Not much will actually fall in this category.

4 Stars: It was very good, and I enjoyed it (or at the very least appreciated how well-written it is), but it’s still moving on from my limited shelf space.

3 Stars: Meh. I don’t regret the time I spent reading it, and it had its good points, but I won’t be telling people to run right out and buy it either.

2 Stars: I didn’t like it, I don’t recommend it, and I won’t be keeping it.

1 Star: I want to punch the author for wasting precious minutes of my life on this crap. I physically threw the book across the room, more than once, while reading it.